Today, the Earth got a little hotter, and a little more crowded.
And the chances of Donald Trump's family and fortune surviving climate change are small, dwindling daily and irreversibly.
Saving BUB, Beautiful Unique Biodiversity, as in this African forest kissing lips plant, is another reason to preserve carbon storing forests. Species of this group are becoming endangered due to African deforestation. Photo Source www.wonderslist.com
Forests: the cheapest way to store carbon
This Was Once Lush Forest in Africa and now a palm oil plantation. The world just lost one more clean water and air conditioning factory, and biodiversity and soil bank.
OO Palm Oil Boom: Companies Must Clean Up Their Act In Africa - Deforestation, climate change and land rights abuse: the palm oil industry has a troubled track record.
OO The Violent Costs Of The Global Palm-Oil Boom - People trying to reclaim land grabbed for palm oil expansion are being murdered, as are the lawyers trying to help them, around the world.
From Seedlings Grow trees for wildlife and soil conservation on the moor. Credit Wayne Hutchinson at Alamy
OO England Deforestation Rising Above Tree Planting Replacement and government must keep to its targets to evade deforestation, say forestry groups.
When we harm forests, we harm ourselves.
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DENYING REALITY WITH FANTASY
Source Political Humor at About.com
OO The Booming Conspiracy Culture Of Climate Science Denial - Conspiracy websites and hyperpartisan media outlets are building huge online audiences who want to hear climate change is a hoax.
Science Doesn't Care About Your Opinion - cherry picking the facts won't change them, or our future...
OO Note To Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real,
-- And Stop Using Our Video To Mislead Americans! 97% of climate scientists agree: global warming is not expected to end anytime soon, despite what Breitbart.com recently wrote, which is a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case.
OO Fellow Lawmakers: Let's Read Real Science News, Not Breitbar says the ranking member on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which recently tweeted a link to a widely debunked Breitbart article questioning warming due to climate change.
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TRUMP TRUMPED BY CLIMATE CHANGE
Donald Trump's Children Likely Face Climate Apocalypse in their lifetimes; the likely crash of civilization that follows will crash their fortune and survival chances for their kids - and all of ours. Unless, of course, Trump acts to cut emissions, hugely. Source heavy.com
OO Trump Says 'Nobody Really Knows' If Climate Change Is Real -
Really, Donald, Most People Do - You're Just Out of the Loop - but he is "studying" whether the United States should withdraw from the Paris agreement.
OO How Far Must Trump Go To Gut US Climate Policies? Pretty far, actually, and he might not be able to count on Republicans in Congress for help.
OO Leaked: Trump's Catastrophic Energy And Climate Agenda outlined in a leaked transition team memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. Written by Trump's head of the Energy Department transition team, it lists 14 planned policies. Here's a sample:
- Withdrawing from the Paris agreement;
- Increasing federal oil and natural gas leasing;
- Lifting the coal lease moratorium;
Expect More Climate Change and Toxic Pollution From Trump's new policies.
- Hitting reset on the Clean Power Plan;
- Reconsidering the "endangerment finding" of greenhouse gas emissions;
- Redefining "Waters of the United States" - expanding the definition would trample state rights to regulate water quality.
- Relaxing the federal fuel economy standards - a proven effective way to cut emissions.
A Vast Array of Solutions Trump Wants to Erase - which, even in their entirety, is still inadequate to address continuing climate change. (That's the More Needed part.)
OO How Trump Can Influence Climate Change Trump could weaken or do away with many of the Obama-era policies focused on greenhouse gas emissions, as this interactive shows.
OO Donald Trump Says He Will End Energy Regulations
That's EPruittA Credit Adam Zyglis at the Buffalo News
OO Trump Picks EPA Enemy Scott Pruitt To Lead EPA and the US into fossil fuel polluting oblivion.
OO An Enemy Of The EPA Picked To [Be]Head It
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OO Trump's Picks For EPA And Interior Threaten The Future Of Clean Water
OO A Climate Denier Is Leading The NASA Transition
Toxic Trio Trump, McCarthy, and Trump's mentor Roy Cohn, McCarthy's lawyer.
OO Trump's Team Revives McCarthyism At Dept Of Energy - seeking names of employees and contractors involved in climate meetings, climate science, forging an international climate pact, and domestic efforts to cut the nation's carbon output. And the team isn't even in the Whitehouse yet!
Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's lawyer, was a mentor to Donald Trump.
OO Schnare Intimidated Climate Scientists
-- Now He's Helping Trump Remake EPA
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CLIMATE LEADERSHIP
OO Obama Administration Offers Parting Protections For Alaska Waters, Tribes closing off 40,000+ square miles of Bering Strait-area waters to future oil leases and requiring feds set up a system for increasing the input of Native people.
OO Army Blocks Drilling Of Dakota Access Oil Pipeline ordered by Obama, but it's only a temporary one, until Trump takes over.
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HOT MELTDOWN
OO An Unusually Warm Arctic Year:
Sign Of Future Climate Turmoil with significant effects on US weather. Takeaways:
- barring a miracle, 2016 will be the warmest on record in the Arctic:
- autumn temperatures soared 36 degrees F above normal over broad areas;
- almost every month saw record high temperatures.
- An Arctic hot spot above Scandinavia-west Russia will probably have big impacts on Asia weather.
- All this is dramatically different from just 30 years ago:
- Summer ice is disappearing fast, and
- Winter ice is forming far slower.
Warming Begats Melt, Begats More Warming is the point of how the albedo re-enforcing feedback loop works in the Arctic. As ice melts, the darker resulting water absorbs more heat, which melts more ice, which absorbs more... well, you get the idea. Source www.ClimateEmergencyInstitute.com
- A major Arctic re-enforcing feedback cycle, the albedo effect,
- - where warming melts ice, darker water absorbs more heat, melting more ice -
- helps jumpstart other re-enforcing feedback cycles fueling further warming:
- This increases global warming in a few ways:
- Summer Arctic seawater absorbs far more heat than ice it replaces;and does so continuously as the sun never sets
- Come fall, as ice forms, much of that heat is released into the air,
- Keeping it warm for a long time.
- Water vapor, a very potent heat absorbing gas,
- is also released,
- Which also keeps heat close to the surface, and
- Helps more clouds form, which slows the escape of heat.
Record Polar Heat Not Unexpected in the Arctic, says Jennifer Frances, an award-winning climate researcher at Rutgers University. It pretty much supports predictions of our human-caused climate change models. Photo Source www.theecologist.org
- As Arctic temperatures warm closer to temperate ones,
- The jet stream wind track wobbles,
- looping way down into the temperate zone
- And bringing lots of heat and water vapor from there to the Arctic,
- Warming it further.
All this might signal a speeding up of global warming.
"This year was not unexpected --
it was a continuation in the losses of ice
and the warming in the Arctic."
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Sea Ice Loss Dooms Polar Bears - And People, for dramatic changes in the Arctic foretell dramatic changes in the weather far south of there, where humanity lives. Source US Fish and Wildlife Service
OO Polar Sea Ice The Size Of India Vanishes In Record Heat
off Antarctica AND the Arctic, where ice is at record lows for this time of year, in a sign of rising global temperatures, climate scientists say.
OO Polar Bear Numbers To Plunge A Third As Sea Ice Melts in 25 years, says the first systematic assessment of how dwindling Arctic sea ice affects the world's largest bear.
OO This Is Not Normal, People:
Arctic And Antarctic Hit Record Low Sea Ice
An Ice Giant Gone Soon Than Thought , new evidence suggests the giant ice sheet of Greenland can melt far faster and more far more frequently than thought. Photo Source The New York Times
OO History Reveals Greenland Ice Might Melt Much Faster Than Believed, having melted several times between ice ages, new evidence indicates. If so, expect sea levels to rise much faster, too.
OO Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Less Stable Than We Thought - Takeaways:
- Evidence shows that the sheet melted to less than 10% of its current size,
- And stayed that way for nearly 300,000 years within the past 1.4 million years.
If the entire sheet melts, it will increase sea levels by 24 feet, flooding out most major coastal cities.
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GOOD CLEAN NEWS
Economic Growth Goes Up, As Emissions Down: Why Burn More Fossil Fuels?
OO US: State Emissions Decoupling From Economic Growth Decarbonization is happening at the states' level. But it needs to happen faster.
OO Operations At World's First Integrated Geothermal-Hydropower Plant Begin at its Cove Fort site in Utah.
OO Google Will Achieve 100 % Renewable Energy In 2017 - go, google, go! The web services leader crosses the finish line ahead of most of its peers.
Source www.thegazette.com
The Power of Speaking Out - public opposition has played a part in delaying and stopping other fossil fuel infrastructures, besides the stoppage of the Dakota access pipeline helped by the opposing Sioux Nation. Photo Source www.thegazette.com
OO Not Just Dakota: Many Other Fossil Fuel Projects Delayed Or Canceled, Too due to a combination of market forces and strong public opposition.
OO Protesters' Win 'A Wakeup Call' For Other Pipeline Projects
but...
OO Dakota Pipeline Likely To Be Continued Under Trump - The decision to halt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline is likely to be overturned by Trump's gang.
OO Germany's Aggressive Switch To Renewables Will Save Nearly $200 Billion
OO Latin America Is Set To Become A Leader In Alternative Energy
Canada Just Got More Beautiful - a carbon price might make it easier to see the beautiful aurora borealis up there. Source pinterest
OO Canada Set To Agree Carbon Price, Marking Climate Split With Trump
OO Five West African Countries Ban 'Dirty Diesel' From Europe - Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast to block imports from oil companies and traders of diesel with sulphur levels many times European limit.
OO International Energy Agency Cuts Coal Demand Forecast For Fifth Year In A Row - The volume of coal used across the world fell for the second year running in 2015 and is set to stay below peak levels in 2016.
OO Plans Falter For West Coast Coal Terminal -
And Exporting Climate Changing Coal
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NATURAL REPERCUSSIONS
OO Extreme Storms Will Be A Lot More Frequent As Climate Warms - The number of heavy downpours in much of the U.S. could increase five-fold by the end of the century, causing flash floods, mudslides and ruining crops, climate researchers predicted Monday.
OO Warming Climate Linked To Changes In Great Lakes Food Web says a new study, and that affects the fish we get out of it, and water quality.
OO The Pacific Warm Water "Blob" Really Messed Up The Northeast Pacific scientists confirm, and contributed to a record toxic algae bloom.
ggg
Ask Not for Whom The Trees Die... these bells ring a warning for us.Source USFS at SF Chronicle
OO Spread By Trade And Climate, Bugs Butcher America's Forests - An expanding army of insects is draining the life out of forests across the US.
Aided by global trade, warming climate and drought-weakened trees, the invaders have become one of the greatest threats to US biodiversity.
OO Unhealthy Forests Affect Distant Ecosystems - When a significant number of trees die, due to drought, heat, insect infestation or exploitation, the climate of forests in faraway lands is altered.
Pikas Are Declining, Too! Living already above tree line, these baby bunny look-alikes have no where to go if it gets too hot for them. Source flickr
OO Surprising Number of Local Populations Of Species Going Extinct a new study says. Takeaways:
- Hundreds of species around the world--plants, animals, marine life--
- are experiencing local extinctions due to climate change.
- Local extinctions hollow out a species, increasing its chances of going totally extinct.
- Researchers say it's likely to be just the beginning.
A Great, Beautiful Kingdom Is Dying due to our greed for consuming things and reproducing, far beyond the carrying capacity of our home, Earth. Photo Source www.tourismontheedge.com
OO Great Barrier Reef Not Likely To Survive If Warming Trend Continues says report. Report projects by 2050 more than 98% of coral reefs will be afflicted by 'bleaching-level thermal stress' each year.
OO The Great And Dying Barrier Reef Australia persists in mining coal even though carbon emissions are killing the world's most spectacular reef.
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SPEAKING OUT
Isn't What You Are Doing to Our Future Illegal? And these teenagers are suing right up the chain of US courts.
OO The Teen-Agers Suing Over Climate Change - Young plaintiffs in a number of states have sued the federal government as part of a legal effort to force action to address climate change.
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SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS
The 10+ Year California Drought Could Last Much Longer if the past 1,000 years is any guide. Megadroughts lasting up to 100 years occurred during this time.
OO Climate Change Costs: Congress Approves Nearly $560 Million For California Drought and many other water projects, too.
OO Uganda, Africa: Population, Climate And Food Issues - exploding human growth and worsening drought fueled by climate change, are causing agriculture to eat into valuable wetlands, which generate moist regional weather.
MEH: But as farming also sucks this area dry of water and soil fertility, it will dry the climate further: this
overpopulated country is headed towards becoming another tragic Sudan.
OO Northeast Christmas Tree Farmers Get Drought In Their Stockings - Drought has killed many young trees on farms across New England.
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FIXING CLIMATE CHANGE
@@ A Simple And Smart Way To Fix Climate Change given by Dan Miller in 2014 at a Ted talk suggests a way to profit as we tackle climate change, by finally charging those who sell and use fossil fuels - and distributing the revenues back to all of us.
The strategy is sure to speed transition to clean renewable energy. What's not to like? Check it out!
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GOOD IDEAS
Then and Now For a Major Water Supply - is shown in these satellite images of California's Lake Mead.
OO Mapping Three Decades Of Global Water Change via satellite image data.
- New research reveals how water distribution has changed over the earth in the last 30 years.
- It's easy to see the effects of climate change: the US western drought, for example.
OO London Will Double Its Spending On Cycling Infrastructure
OO New Nanogenerator May Lead To Human-Powered Smartphones - Known as a biocompatible ferroelectret nanogenerator, or FENG, it could one day be used to generate power all sorts of portable and wearable devices using human motion, energy that can be converted into electricity.
A Ticket To Ride To A Clean Solar Powered Future with the first US solar road being tested in Idaho. Source www.yaleclimateconnections.org
OO US Solar Panel Roadways: The First One Is Being Tested - solar panels covered with bulletproof glass. The developers think they will more than pay for their maintenance and cost with the power they deliver.
OO Why Electric Cars Are Only As Clean As Their Power Supply
OO Paris: If The Pool Is Warm, Thank The Washing Machine
- City Reuses Waste Heat in Clever Ways - from unconventional sources like household wastewater.
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OO Across North America Native Peoples Push For A Renewable Energy Future
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FOSSIL FUEL FOLLIES
Rice Is Nice, But Generates Methane in its growth, even if this farmer planted a really cool work of art.
Source thoughtpantry.wordpress.com
OO Atmospheric Levels Of Methane, A Powerful Greenhouse Gas, Are Spiking, scientists report, and blame increasing agriculture, rather than fossil fuels, for its increase.
OO Climate-Conscious Vietnam Choosing Coal Over Nuclear ,which is succumbing to rising costs and environmental fears, forcing Vietnam back into coal.
MEH: Why isn't this country investing heavily into clean renewables and sustainable populations, instead?
Buying Beneath the Waves What We Can't Use - Offshore fossil fuels cannot be burned if we are to slow the pace and magnitude of catastrophic climate change. Credit Kein at Wikimedia Commons
OO Oil, Gas Industry Leaders Eagerly Invest
In Future Climate Change -
Take Stakes In Mexican Offshore Fields paying billions in an auction of deepwater drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, further nailing the coffin lid of their children's future - and ours.
OO Auto Group Tries To Block EPA From Finalizing Vehicle Rules with tough fuel economy standards through the 2025 model year -- one of the most effective ways of cutting climate changing emissions.
OO North Dakota Could Be Biggest Loser In Ruling Against Oil Pipeline as delays cost pipeline's builder hundreds of millions of dollars; the nation's energy supply is unlikely to suffer.
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
@@ Climate Change 101: Why Care?
What You Need to Know - Bill Nye tells it all in five minutes amid graphic, dynamic, engaging, compelling imagery. Check it Out!
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If we do not live sustainably,
Our children will die inhumanely.
@@ The Cost of Unintended Pregnancy: Too Young
Teen childbearing cost US taxpayers $9+ Billion in 2010
And the costs of raising a child usually ensures decades, if not a life, of poverty for its mother.
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Help prevent unintended pregnancies in your community:
publicize where women can access affordable contraception.
They can go here to find locations:
And there are many more actions you can do, right here.
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SOLAR KEEPS SMILING
OO These 3 Maps Show The Absurd Growth Potential Of US Rooftop Solar - Takeaways:
- in every state, home rooftop solar could be a major energy resource;
- total US rooftop solar could supply 25 % of all the continental US electric demand.
OO Solar Power Will Cross A Carbon Threshold By 2018 - A new study shows that solar panels more than make up for the carbon that is released during their production.
Related Headline:
OO Solar Panels Have Been Benefitting The Climate 'Since 2011'
OO New Storage-Paired Solar Tracker Expands A Solar Plant's Energy Output
Check it out here, right now!
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WHY WE SHOULD ACT NOW: RISING RISKS
Daily Climate Change: Global Map of Unusual Temperatures, Dec 19, 2016
Source cci-reanalyzer.org
How unusual has the weather been? No one event is "caused" by climate change, but global warming, which is predicted to increase unusual, extreme weather, is having a daily effect on weather, worldwide.
Looking above at recent temperature anomalies, much of the US is colder than normal as a weakened jetstream delivers Arctic weather deep into the US. Meanwhile, the waters surrounding it are experiencing warmer than normal temperatures: the eastern Pacific warm spot continues and so does the drought in California.
Much of the areas surrounding the North Pole are experiencing far warmer than normal temperatures - not good news for our Arctic thermal shield of ice. Hotter than usual temperatures continue to dominate human habitats.
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There is, of course, much more news on the consequences and solutions to climate change. To get it, check out this annotated resource list I've compiled, "Climate Change News Resources," at Wordpress.com here. For more information on the science of climate change, its consequences and solutions you can view my annotated list of online information resources here.
To help you understand just what science does and does NOT do, check this out!
Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this wild flower I photographed one spring. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future. If you'd like to join the increasing numbers of people who want to TELL Congress that they will vote for clean energy candidates you can do so here. It's our way of letting Congress know there's a strong clean energy voting bloc out there. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.
Peace On Earth and Happy Holidays, All!
